The City of Sydney has trialled a dedicated coffee cup recycling system across office buildings. If the system is made permanent it could divert millions of cups from landfill each year.
The trial run by Closed Loop Environmental Solutions placed dedicated bins for takeaway coffee cups in three office buildings in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to help build the case for a dedicated takeaway coffee cup recycling facility.
Many people don’t realise that most takeaway coffee cups are not recyclable, as they have a plastic interior that can take up to 50 years to break down in landfill.
Over the four-week trial at Sydney law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, 4278 coffee cups were placed in the dedicated bins, proving office workers were willing to make sustainable choices when it came to recycling their coffee cups.
12,000 cups were collected across the three cities throughout the trial.
The City supported the Sydney trial with a $17,500 grant.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said coffee is a beloved part of Sydney’s culture, but the majority of cups that are used end up in landfill.
“These takeaway coffee cups are presenting us with a major environmental dilemma,” said the Lord Mayor.
“We don’t have a dedicated recycling facility in Australia that can deal with the coffee cup structure, so the billion coffee cups sold every year usually end up in landfill.
“If we stacked all the coffee cups discarded annually in Australia, they would stretch from the Gold Coast right around the eastern and southern coast along Highway 1 all the way to Perth and back again.”
Closed Loop also runs a coffee cup collection program in the UK where it has recycled more than seven million cups.
Managing Director, Robert Pascoe said the trial showed that office workers would recycle takeaway coffee cups if given a dedicated bin.
“A similar program in the UK collects used coffee cups and takes them to a dedicated facility where they are shredded and made into polymer, a durable plastic which can be used for carry trays, placemats, coasters, outdoor furniture or even used in shop fit outs,” Mr Pascoe said.
“This trial has shown that coffee drinkers will use an alternative bin for takeaway cups and if a dedicated facility was set up, tens of millions of cups could be diverted from landfill every year.”
The company has developed a sorted from solution that can reuse the coffee cup materials after they are collected for recycling.
“We teamed up with researchers in the UK and have developed a technology that combines the coffee cups with a polymer. The output is a durable plastic-fibre compound that can be used for almost anything,” Mr Pascoe said.
The coffee cups collected as part of the trial were on display at Wynyard Park this morning.
